suggestion Co-op

[Jeo Go Moko]

I suggest that there should be co op multie player me and my friend like the game its 4 stars right now  I'll bump it up to 5 stars if they ad a multie player 

 

[Maniac]

For me, I think co-op / multiplayer would ruin Long Dark's immersion.

The atmosphere revolves entirely around the loneliness of surviving the apocalypse, outside of story mode of course which obviously couldn't be multiplayer.

With two people as well, finding and gathering resources would make survival too easy I reckon.

[Bearded_Dude]

5 hours ago, Maniac said:

For me, I think co-op / multiplayer would ruin Long Dark's immersion.

The atmosphere revolves entirely around the loneliness of surviving the apocalypse, outside of story mode of course which obviously couldn't be multiplayer.

With two people as well, finding and gathering resources would make survival too easy I reckon.

They could easily make it solo or coop. I’d play both. Brings different things into play and sharing scavenged items (or not) is a dynamic worth investigating imo.

[bobbyem]

Loneliness is a big part of the games atmosphere and theme, multiplayer would damage what makes the game stand out. 

[ManicManiac]

Often brought up... I recommend using the search function, there has been a lot of good discussion on this topic in previous posts.

  

Personally, I really don't like the idea of co-op or multiplayer for this game... however, there is also a technical reason I don't think it would be feasible:

On 1/31/2020 at 5:14 AM, ManicManiac said:

I think that would completely undermine the point of the game (the survival sandbox I mean - as that's what most are referring to when they raise this topic).

On another note, coop/multiplayer is usually a no go when there are mechanics in a game that utilize "time compression."

 

On 2/16/2020 at 10:03 AM, ManicManiac said:

The idea has certainly been proposed and discussed very often and in a variety of ways... however most of them rarely consider what I think is the main problem.  The mechanics of this game in particular make Coop/Multiplayer kind of a "no go."  Simply put... the thing that would be the biggest challenge is the fact that there are many mechanics (that help form the foundation of the game play) that utilize "time compression."  When you have situations that mess with "time" it becomes a problem with multiple players interacting in the same space.

For example... if you have two players and one is out chopping wood (that compresses 45 min - 1 hour of time) then the other player either has to also accelerate or they get "out of sync" so to speak.  If one is spending 5 hours fishing (that is normally compressed), what happens then?  Does the fishing then go in real time?  In other words because this game is filled with mechanics that compress time (sleeping, "passing time"/"wait 'till ready", harvesting, fishing, breaking things down, using the forge, crafting, milling, and so on) then you can't really have two or more players interacting and still keep them synchronized in terms of the time of day... you'd have to force everything to happen in "normal game time" - which for some long tasks, I think, would really suck.

I hope my examples help to illustrate why I don't think coop/multiplayer would not work in this game just from the standpoint of fundamental mechanics.

 

[ajb1978]

The only real way to make that work is to decouple player action from the clock.  So if it's 8am and you decide to read for 8 hours, your 8 hours passes in the blink of an eye.  Your fatigue, thirst, and hunger would have decreased by 8 hours worth...but the time of day would still be 8am so that it's fair for every player.  And that sounds like it's a solution until you realize that day and night now cannot be accelerated.  At all.  Once the sun goes down, you would have to wait 60 real life minutes for the night to pass.  Either that or carry 3 liters of lamp oil around with you to fuel your lantern all night.  So no matter how you spin it, multiplayer is simply not compatible with this game at a fundamental, technical level.  Even if some modder somehow shoehorned multiplayer into it Skyrim Together style, the immersion would be destroyed.

[stratvox]

Well, there's one thing about running a multiplayer coop, and that is that you could do it when everyone's in time acceleration (i.e. only accelerate the actual game clock when all the players are in a time accelerated mode). Most people that play this game keep being diurnal (up during the day and sleeping at night) so in a multiplayer situation you could probably get through a lot of the nights pretty quick, but the crafting stuff during the day would be brutal (I'm about to put five hours into this coat, guess I'll walk away from the machine for nearly an hour).

I don't really see an easy way to get around that.

[Guest jeffpeng]

I think the wishlist needs an FWF (Frequently Wished Features) sticky. No idea how often this has already come up, and it's one of the things the devs are most adamant about that it won't ever make it into the current game. For very good reasons which can be read in a lot of good posts about this.

Edited July 8, 2020 by jeffpeng

[LkP]

2 hours ago, jeffpeng said:

For very good reasons which can be read in a lot of good posts about this.

Yeah ? I've never seen a good post answering this. Just repeating the same arguments doesn't make them true, let alone good.

 

There is no technical difficulty in implementing this (if you imagine a 2 players game and think about what "cooperation" means). There's a lot of work on characters' animation, sure. And the devs can choose not to put effort in it, of course.
All the rest is just opinions about what the game should be. Even if stated as a "True Eternal Truth", they're just opinions. And if the same people have the right to express the same opinion on every topic of the 'wish list' forum, maybe every other user can express once their wish of a coop mode, maybe...

[stratvox]

1 minute ago, LkP said:

There is no technical difficulty in implementing this (if you imagine a 2 players game and think about what "cooperation" means).

I look forward to you paying for it.

Technical reasons are far from the only reasons cited by the dev. 

[Guest jeffpeng]

@LkPWell, here we go I guess. I'll try have at a few reasons, and try to go in deeper with them.
 

1. The obvious develoment challenge

Creating software that exchanges live data of permutable states over a network which can include significant latency and such things as package loss and subsequent desynchronization is not exactly rocket science (anymore), but it's also no easy feat to do well. Especially not if you introduce such a factor into a mature product this late into its lifecycle. Then, yeah, character models would have to be done, but all things considered: that's probably the easiest thing as all neccesary resources (motion captures, animators, textures) are mostly existing. But two character models would also have to have collision against each other, which would introduce new challenges in map building as the last thing you want is two players blocking "each other" while navigating narrow spaces.

The bigger problem, however, is how TLD's code is arranged (and inb4 you ask: yes I do know how), and how the entire game is built around "thePlayer". Refactoring the code to accomodate for more than a single player would require to basically rewrite most of the game's code base. This not only includes actions directly linked to the players themselves: AI code is not written to handle more than a single player. Code that primarily relates to the weather system is doing direct manipulation of the player's values. Even code that renders the interface is not written to handle a specific player, but just "the" player. This scheme is prevalent throughout the entire game code. This hasn't been done because it couldn't have been done otherwise, but because at the earliest stages of development a choice was made: this is a single player game. Hence even considering more than one player in the world would have added unneccesary complexity to the development. And yeah, avoiding things you don't need is a cornerstone of successful engineering, not only of software, but in general.

Such decisions you make at the earliest concept stages of development. You do not easily reverse them. And considering the amount of work required in TLD's case to facilitate this compared to the miniscule payoff in additionally generated sales it would be a very uneconomic decision to make. Because: if you are committing development resources comparable to developing half a new game, it might be a better idea to develop a full new game from the grounds up and actually be able to sell it. Not even considering that a TLD reworked to a multiplayer game would throw the game very far back in terms of code maturity.

But: Considering how often this request has come up I can fathom TLD2, if it ever materializes, will be written with Coop in mind, even if there is no immediate multiplayer support. But it's something neither financially feasible nor viable from an engineering standpoint to bring into the existing game.

2. Timelapsing with more than one player

I used to do some/most of the development work for a rather ambitious Minecraft Modpack. It included timelapsing, awake and asleep, to accellerate the work of several machines and processes for the cost of food, health if applicable, and rest (which was another resource in the pack) if timelapsing occurred while awake. And yes, you had to sleep to stay alive, but couldn't just sleep if you were not tired, not unlike TLD (maybe it's worth mentioning my work on this modpack predated me playing TLD). This acceleration was achieved by not just advancing the clock, but actually calculating ticks as fast as the server could handle it. A at that time modern (think 4770K) PC or server could easily accelerate in-game time by a factor of 30, depending on the amount of currently ticking entities in the world. (A standalone mod that used to do that is called "Somnia", btw).

Bringing over this feature into multiplayer was a royal pain in the backside, as anyone that ever dived into the idea of accelerating time for multiple people at the same real time can easily understand, because time can only be lapsed if all players on the server "agree" to it by either waiting of sleeping (if they can). And, eventually, it was cut entirely from multiplayer. Also for technical reasons (servers being able to timelapse faster than clients, for example), but mostly because it was simply not fun having to idle for minutes while getting some sleep, and also not being begged by other players to please pass some time so they didn't have to wait.

This problem, however, is far more pronounced with TLD as it isn't just require for sleep, but a core design philosophy of the game as "time" is a resource available to the player, and certain actions consume it in that time is a product of five other factors: warmth, hunger, thirst, rest (and those four by accumulation: health) and daylight. By spending these resources through spending virtual in-game time performing these actions becomes meaningful through the cost attached to them. However: the player doesn't have to endure these sometimes lengthy time periods by lapsing time to a very short amount of mere seconds.

A simple example of this is chopping wood. If this could be done in in-game seconds as well as it is done in real-time seconds there would be hardly anything preventing me from going out, even in a blizzard, and chopping up some Fir. Making this decision would have no meaning. On the other hand if I had to wait for a fir limb to be chopped down in real time on the same timescale everything else happens - which is roughly 1:12, resulting in me having to wait 3 minutes and 45 seconds in real time - making the decision to chop wood would have little to do with if it is a smart decision for my avatar to chop this fir limb, but more so if I am willing to spend 3 minutes and 45 seconds staring at the screen.

With a second player in the game I would have to stare at the screen for 3 minutes and 45 seconds chopping down a fir limb if the other player is doing something not time lapsed. Or: let's say I've contracted hypothermia, but my buddy didn't, and I had to take a long, unscheduled 12 hour nap to get back on my feet. This would prompt me to wait a full real time hour if in the same timeframe my buddy wanted to hunt some food for his ravaged friend.

Sure, you could coordinate timelapsing. That would maybe work rather well with 2 people. But the complexity of the problem would scale exponentially with every player added. Coordinating three people would make the game more about coordinating when to sleep, craft and harvest than actually playing the game. Coordinating four people I can't imagine to work unless we are talking military discipline. Even more and the Manhattan Project becomes a piece of cake in comparision. 

And sure, there are possible mitigations the developers could employ. For one: remove the time cost, and just apply hunger, rest and thirst cost as if the time had passed without it actually passing. Maybe even the warmth cost because ... uh... just do it, for the sake of argument. That still leaves the problem with coordinating sleep - but maybe here we could at least remove "rest as a resource" for multiplayer games in general to make coordinating sleep easier, even though this would mean that some members of a party would potentially have to throw away some of their daylight to allow other members to catch up. Or one could drastically lower how much rest is spent for performing actions while also allowing sleep opportunistically.

The problem with all those mitigations is: at some point the game you have is surely interesting and, if done right, probably even fun, but it's not The Long Dark.

Bottomline: There is no good way to make timelapsing work in multiplayer withough dumbing it down so much it becomes meaningless, and timelapsing is an integral component of why The Long Dark is the game it is.

3. Resource distribution and difficulty

Another key design concept of The Long Dark is that resources are finite (Yeah, I know, beachcombing is a thing, but.... pfff ... you don't want to have to rely on that for a fun and engaging experience) and hence, while the end is actually VERY far away, it is inevitable. Now more people comsume resources at a faster rate proportional to their sheer numbers. So three people eat three times as much as one does, and three people also burn through clothing at (roughly) three times the rate one person would do. So the intuitive answer would be: Just put three times as many things into the world!

Well, yeah, but actually: no. You see: wildlife is also a resource in TLD. Passive wildlife as much as hostile wildlife. Now you can balance that by either putting three times the animals into the game or making them three times as tough and fatty - or any product of the two factors. In any case the cooperation and coordination becomes neccessary to survive because now Moose come in packs of two and they take at least three arrows each. Facing that alone? Not a chance. So, in essence, you are now playing The Long Dark: Goonsquad. Enjoy the quiet Apocalypse on a deserted island, with convenience stores packed to the roof, brimming with wildlife and hordes of wolves out to gank you - which you have to focus fire down like trashmobs in World of Warcraft.

Sure, you could also just leave everything as it is, just shorten respawn timers, but that would make hostile wildlife trivial to deal with. Having three arrows being repeatedly flung at you makes the biggest and baddest of the Moose family seem meek prey. Which is pretty damn required, because with all those mouths to feed and butts to cover.... you really need to go on a killing spree sooner rather than later.

Also: how does such a game deal with a player dropping out of the party because their significant other or a higher ranking family member demands their attention elsewhere? Do supplies magically vanish but pop back up when they log back in? Do bears miraculously shrink or grow like they would in a classic multiplayer game of Diablo 2 when a player leaves or joins?

What I am getting at: Balance is an important factor of The Long Dark. Maybe even the essential factor to give all those things you do meaning. Because: everything you do in the game has meaning. What sets TLD apart from other genre bretheren is that everything you do comes at a cost, has a downside and an upside, and is meticulously tuned to give you challenges and options at the same time. If you upset this rather complex balance this drastically by introducing simple mulipliers to accomodate for more than one player you are creating a balancing nightmare that can try to approximate the original game, but never replicate the experience you were so eager to share with your friends.

Also the limitations required to make the game work as closely as possible to how it is was thought out to be would raise so many barriers, like only being able to explore the game together, and only if all people that started the game are actually present, that it would be a rather complicated undertaking which would probably make a lot of people realize that the end product feels nothing like what they envisioned it to be. 

So ..... bottomline

I mean I really get why you want to share TLD with someone else. Overcoming the exceptional hardships of feast or famine survival sounds much better with a friend or even a few of them. And I think properly designed this can even work - although I'm not convinced this has been done properly yet, as other games of the survival genre fall short in their multiplayer modes, at least in my opinion. But the way The Long Dark was designed it never aspired to work in multiplayer, and what makes The Long Dark great cannot be made to work in multiplayer without losing its identity. This is very much my opinion, but I think I made a rather good case why this opinion is an informed and well considered one.

Edited July 10, 2020 by jeffpeng

[LkP]

@jeffpenghere we go, indeed . Thanks for taking the time to rationally consider the matter.
As a side note and introduction, I have a very "problem solving" mindset. Yet, as you stated, in every project you have to put aside things instead of trying to solve how to do it. But that's just not how I think. I believe that our specie manage to evolve because we are all different with different approaches, and sometimes they fit well together to move forward, on any topic. So I'll focus on solving the issues, not if it worth the pain. I'm in no position to judge anyway. I totally respect the decision to not put that feature in TLD, I just disagree on most of the points people are making about "why". And we can disagree (not just you and me but all participants of the forum) without putting too much ego in the balance, I hope. So I'm stating my disagreement.
I appreciate reading your text, I will just try to be as clear as possible in my answer.

 

Quote

1. The obvious develoment challenge

There's a lot of examples of multiplayer games managing to deal with servers and latency issues. A ton. No, it's not trivial, yes, there are difficulties. Maybe I should search how Unity is providing support on this topic, but ok, point taken.
I don't see refactoring the code as really challenging. It can be bothering, since you're not really "creating". Technically, providing changes in variables for one or two players shouldn't be that hard. Even if that's a pain in "wherever you dislike having pain" to go through a whole program that wasn't thought in advance for some modularity, I don't see it to take more hours of work than preparing all the textures and animations for all actions (there's a lot of actions in this great game).
Yes, there are difficulties to implement a multiplayer mode. And yes, most of them are obvious... So, except if I missed something that really can't be man-made, I don't see a real challenge.
 

Quote

2. Timelapsing with more than one player

On 7/8/2020 at 6:24 PM, LkP said:

if you imagine a 2 players game and think about what "cooperation" means

Sorry, but most of your arguments don't answer this and extrapolate on "parties" of players. With my (not so wide) knowledge, and as I clearly said, I came to the conclusion that "multiplayer" in TLD should be restrain to 2.

If someone is not able to cooperate, sure, they will not enjoy the ride. If you're a bit more into playing with others, just another one in that scenario, all it takes is two people to agree on synchronizing, more or less, their actions. And maybe a "cancel" button while sleeping (as you may have start to consider).
Maybe I should make an example, even if I'm really reluctant to :
You're playing TLD-4-2. You really want to chop that fir limb. Your mate has no choice. You need fir wood, you love fir wood, fir wood is your life
You tell him/her/they/it/yourself ( last one is in case you're mastering playing alone on two machines at the same time and get a bit schizophrenic doing so ), where did that parenthesis started ? ok... so, you tell  your mate :
- I need a 1 hour time-lapse.
- Again ? For what now ?
- FIR WOOOOOOOD !
- ok, I'll cook, at least we can do something with it...
- heeeeere I goooo !
and you're indeed staring at your screen, hopefully with an animation of your hands actually chopping that sweat limb. Because your mate is tired of your obsession with fire fuel, and makes you pay a bit for it, it may last for a few seconds. But deep down, it's a good mate. Mate starts a fire, your animation accelerate for the same time-lapse. Fire is done. Staring at animation again. Mate is cooking 1/2 liter water, because he's not using medieval measurement standards. Time is moving forward again.
Yet, you're still chopping. And, guess what, your mate is so nice that he comes beside you and start the same action, dividing the rest of the time needed by two.
Yes, you've waited 10 seconds more for it to be done, sorry for that.

Instead of worthless fir, put a bear corpse and just imaging.

Bottomline, there are some good ways of dealing with time-lapsing, ways that increase and ways that lower the diffi... what comes next ?

Quote

3. Resource distribution and difficulty

As you can imagine, multiplayer has its own balance (some actions are easier, others are more difficult). There are some things to consider making different between 1 or 2 players games to maintain a good balance, not so much from what I'm able to consider.
Coordinate your actions, cooperate. Or pay the price... I won't put an example on every situations that would be a problem, on others that would go smoothly. and answer every single details. It is doable, in a fun way. If it is or not the nature of the game, that's an opinion.

There's too much food for one in Interloper, do you really need to add more for the second player ?
Do we have a cloth problem, or any other that some players feel really really really important for them to survive  ? Maybe, but I personally get bored before the 5000 in-game day, so if we reach 1000 that could be enough.

How do we deal with a player dropping off from a server ? Game is paused, second player can leave or wait. If both leave, they can come back together on the server and launch the last save.
By the way, I was expecting some questions like "how do we save, when ?" or "how can we change map ?". That are no details.
And

Quote

So ..... bottomline

yes, I'd love to share that game "live". I have no real expectation for it to happen. That doesn't mean I didn't put some real thoughts in it, and try to see if it is achievable anywhere else than in my own mind.

 

To conclude with a personal point of view :

As I already stated (not so) few lines above, if a 2 players mode is fitting or not the game spirit is just an opinion.
And if it is not yours, I guess you don't play Wintermute, because there's only at most a trace of "loneliness identity". Yet, that  is the mode the devs had in mind since the beginning for this game.

Edited July 10, 2020 by LkP

[Guest jeffpeng]

5 hours ago, LkP said:

I have a very "problem solving" mindset

I solve problems for a living, and that's why...

5 hours ago, LkP said:

So I'll focus on solving the issues, not if it worth the pain.

is generally a nice way to look at things, but not sustainable if you actually want to make some dough with whatever you are doing 😉

5 hours ago, LkP said:

There's a lot of examples of multiplayer games managing to deal with servers and latency issues. A ton. No, it's not trivial, yes, there are difficulties. Maybe I should search how Unity is providing support on this topic, but ok, point taken.
I don't see refactoring the code as really challenging. It can be bothering, since you're not really "creating". Technically, providing changes in variables for one or two players shouldn't be that hard. Even if that's a pain in "wherever you dislike having pain" to go through a whole program that wasn't thought in advance for some modularity, I don't see it to take more hours of work than preparing all the textures and animations for all actions (there's a lot of actions in this great game).
Yes, there are difficulties to implement a multiplayer mode. And yes, most of them are obvious... So, except if I missed something that really can't be man-made, I don't see a real challenge.

I'm not really sure what your coding background is. I have a decade and a half under the hood, and to me, personally, adjusting a code base this large to do something that it was never designed for.... with all the testing, debugging and reviewing .... when basically nobody will be paying for that? pffff. That seriously scares me. Sure, of course it can be man-made. And the challenge is not in if it is possible to do it - yeah, it certainly is - but if it the amount of work which I rate at exceedingly high is viable for the expected payoff which I rate at close to nil.

6 hours ago, LkP said:

Sorry, but most of your arguments don't answer this and extrapolate on "parties" of players. With my (not so wide) knowledge, and as I clearly said, I came to the conclusion that "multiplayer" in TLD should be restrain to 2.

I'm not sure that would be a product that would - again - justify the amount work needed, but yes, granted, restricting it to two players solves quite a few problems.

6 hours ago, LkP said:

dividing the rest of the time needed by two.

That's a neat idea.

6 hours ago, LkP said:

As you can imagine, multiplayer has its own balance (some actions are easier, others are more difficult). There are some things to consider making different between 1 or 2 players games to maintain a good balance, not so much from what I'm able to consider.
Coordinate your actions, cooperate. Or pay the price... I won't put an example on every situations that would be a problem, on others that would go smoothly. and answer every single details. It is doable, in a fun way. If it is or not the nature of the game, that's an opinion.

There's too much food for one in Interloper, do you really need to add more for the second player ?
Do we have a cloth problem, or any other that some players feel really really really important for them to survive  ? Maybe, but I personally get bored before the 5000 in-game day, so if we reach 1000 that could be enough.

Again, that might work if you restrict it to two players. Again, I'm not sure that's something that would justify the work, but yes, in that case it could - to some extend - work. Although .... you are already putting limitations on this that would call forth subsequent desires from the community. It's still not a good solution.

6 hours ago, LkP said:

By the way, I was expecting some questions like "how do we save, when ?" or "how can we change map ?". That are no details.

Well... when do we save? At every instance a player would normally save. How can we change maps? Well, yeah, that's more tricky, and goes right back to point number 1 since this would require some major work at how the game is working internally. In fact it would have to be able to run several scenes at once. Since even a house is already another scene in itself. Without modern world streaming I don't see this work well, if at all.

6 hours ago, LkP said:

yes, I'd love to share that game "live". I have no real expectation for it to happen. That doesn't mean I didn't put some real thoughts in it, and try to see if it is achievable anywhere else than in my own mind.

Like I said I thinkt it's possible, I think it's doable, it's just not the game you wanted to share anymore once you put in the work to make it shareable. You seek a lot of easy solutions to complex problems that, in my opinion, would not satisfy enough people to really make it worthwhile. If you wanted to do it right you would have to do that with a different game that was thought out to handle this type of gameplay.

6 hours ago, LkP said:

As I already stated (not so) few lines above, if a 2 players mode is fitting or not the game spirit is just an opinion.
And if it is not yours, I guess you don't play Wintermute, because there's only at most a trace of "loneliness identity". Yet, that  is the mode the devs had in mind since the beginning for this game.

That's the one thing you probably misunderstood. With identity I wasn't referring to the loneliness aspect, but to core gameplay elements that would suffer from having to sychronize with another / other player(s). I think you can very much have a "we" against the world experience instead of an "I" against the world experience set in The Long Dark and very much capture the feel of the game.

[oplli]

i think that everybody should play the long dark how they like it, if some people like the lonelyess effect of this game then go for it. multiplayer is a thing that i think, could really be enjoyable in the long dark. i would love to play with my firends and survive as we do in real life. i think that if hinterland ads a multiplayer mode it will have to be made correctly and players would have the choice between singleplayer and multiplayer. i see no bad in adding multiplayer if it does not change the singleplayer experience and vice versa.

[Patriot]

There's a survival game that is co-op. It's called "Don't Starve Together" 

[oplli]

Just now, Patriot said:

There's a survival game that is co-op. It's called "Don't Starve Together" 

the long dark together why not?

[oplli]

Just now, Patriot said:

There's a survival game that is co-op. It's called "Don't Starve Together" 

you dont understand. if people request multiplayer on hinterland forums it is not to play dont starve or any other multiplayer games

we like real thought here and constructive messages you could explain why you prefer solo instead of writting those messages

[Patriot]

Others have explained why solo is a superior gameplay mechanic. If the difficulty of the game were radically scaled upward it might be feasible. However that's ignoring the very large problem from a development standpoint. For games that aren't worked from the ground up with multiplayer in mind it is not a simply plugin. It's a very expensive and lengthy development process. If they haven't been working on it since the release date then wishing for it is in vain. The time and resources would be the same as developing a brand new game. So it would be more practical to request the Hinterlands to think about developing a new game with multiplayer functionality.